News in Thurrock

BASILDON & Thurrock University Hospital and a local charity that supports victims of domestic abuse have received donations totalling £4,000 from the Amazon fulfilment centre in Tilbury.

Changing Pathways supports those affected by domestic abuse using an empowering approach, assisting the survivor to address their immediate safety needs and setting them on a pathway to recovery based on their own personal experiences. The charity received a donation of £1,000.

UP to 1,000 new homes could be created in Grays town centre under the government's initiative to build the country's way out of a post Covid-19 recession.

A number of infrastructure schemes in Thurrock have been given the green light after the government approved financial backing for projects nominated by the South East Local Enterprise Partnership.

POLICE are hoping that the Tilbury community may be able to help them track down a wanted man.

They are hoping to find Ahmed Bakr who that want to speak to for failing to correctly notify the force of his address.

THURROCK Council has revealed that the deaths of 39 Vietnamese would-be illegal immigrants has proved a distorting factor in national news coverage of the impact of Covid-19 in the region.

A national newspaper article recently used government-produced statistics to show the borough as the place in the country which had suffered the highest increase in death rates during the coronavirus pandemic.

FOR the second time this week firefighters have spent the night combating a large blaze on a Thurrock industrial site. Some residents nearby were evacuated from their homes as a precaution and an exclusion zone set up.

Crews were alerted to a blaze at a storage yard off Romford Road in Aveley, just after 9.30 last night (Tuesday, 4 August) and were still at the scene as dawn broke this morning.

Report by Local Democracy Reporting Service correspondent Steve Shaw and Nub News editor Neil Speight

DETAILS plans of how work will be carried out to demolish part of Thurrock Council's civic offices and build a controversial new block have been submitted for planning approval.

The work on the project, which has been driven through by the council's ruling Conservative group despite a majority of councillors opposing it – and which gained planning approval largely on a technicality as opposition members were unable to vote on it – will be carried out by Kier Construction, the company currently undertaking the massively over-budget and delayed A13 widening project.

SECRETIVE meetings over how to reshape south Essex have cost taxpayers more than £1.2million, it has been revealed.

Over the past three years a partnership of six council leaders from across the region has been holding meetings in secret about the new super council, with no record of when they took place or what was discussed, yet at the same time each authority paid out £60,000 to take part – equal to £1.26 million.

RESIDENTS are celebrating after a controversial planning application was rejected.

Thurrock Council's planning committee voted 7-1 against the application for eight homes on land adjacent to Curling Lane, Helleborine and Meesons Lane in Grays - overturning planning officers' recommendation for approval. Only committee chair Tom Kelly supported the application.

THE future of the Pizza Esxpress restaurant at intu Lakeside appears secure, despite news that the chain is set to close up to 67 of its 449 outlets.

That would mean up to 1,100 people losing their jobs but the posts at the Lakeside restaurant, on the centre's food court, seem safe as it is currently open.